We have now had the results of our competition and the winners have been contacted. Please accept our apologies for the delay and our appreciation for your patience. Thank you to all who entered. The P&P team

Just to update all of those waiting to hear whether or not they have been placed in the competition. I’m afraid we are still awaiting the final decision. Apologies for any inconvenience.

The P&P team

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we are unable to notify the competition winners today, as originally promised. Please accept our apologies. As soon as we are in a position to do so we will post again to say that all the winners have been informed.

The P&P team

Workshop with Keith Hutson on Saturday 18 May 2019, 10.30-12.30 at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. The fee is £20. Please email davidborrott@btinternet.com to confirm a place. Once your place has been confirmed payment can be made by cheque or by using the PayPal button below:

Workshop Payment £20

Keith Hutson

Keith has written for Coronation Street and for several well-known comedians. His plays have been performed at venues including The Royal Exchange, Manchester.

Since beginning to submit his poetry five years ago, Keith has had over 150 poems published in journals. He has also had competition successes including being longlisted twice for the National Poetry Competition, shortlisted for the Wordsworth Trust Prize, and a winner in the Poetry Business Yorkshire Prize.

Keith tours extensively with Carol Ann Duffy, recently the Edinburgh Book Festival, Durham Festival and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank.

Keith’s debut pamphlet, Routines, was published in 2016 by Poetry Salzburg (where Keith is now on the Editorial Board) followed by a smith doorstop pamphlet, Troupers (2018) which was selected by Carol Ann as a Laureate’s Choice. His debut full collection, Baldwin’s Catholic Geese, was published by Bloodaxe in February 2019.

He delivers poetry and performance workshops for the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation and for the Square Chapel Arts Centre Halifax.

These poems illuminate something timeless about the human spirit. Keith Hutson is a wonderful talent – his technically accomplished and hardworking poems arrive all of a piece, centre stage. Carol Ann Duffy on Baldwin’s Catholic Geese.

APOLOGIES, DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED: click here for full details

Please come along to our annual competition event where judge Kei Miller will announce the winners who will read their winning poems. Kei will also do a reading of his own work. The venue is the Whitworth Art Gallery, time 2.30-4.00. The event is free and everyone is welcome.

Kei Miller is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer and broadcaster. His many books include the novel Augustown (W&N, 2016) and poetry collection The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet, 2014) which won the Forward Prize (Best Poetry Collection of 2014). In 2010, the Institute of Jamaica awarded him the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to Literature. He has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow and is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter.  Kei Miller is represented by Renaissance One

Daphne Duo

Oscar Tabor started learning the violin at the age of 4, due to the influence of his older sister’s piano playing. His love for music was further impassioned by the tuition of Dr Robert Jacoby, with whom he started learning at the age of 9. In the years that followed, Oscar played solos with the Dorset Chamber Orchestra and performed in concerts and competitions in and around the South West of England, often with musical members of his family.

Oscar currently studies at the Royal Northern College of Music and is taught by the Czech violinist and composer Pavel Fischer. Fischer’s love for Eastern European folk music has since inspired Oscar to play a wider range of genres. These include working with the Klezmer band Kibitz, and managing a gypsy jazz outfit named the Misophone collective. In Oscar’s 3rd year studying at the Royal Northern, he met Marcus Forster, and their mutual love for a myriad of genres led to them to the forming the Daphne Duo.

Young guitarist Marcus Forster first took to the electric and bass guitar playing various styles and fusions from blues and folk to rock and metal, performing and recording with bands throughout his home county of Northumberland. At the age of twelve, Marcus turned his interest to focus on the classical guitar.

After graduating from school, Marcus had a short but fruitful career in arboriculture before beginning a Bachelor of Music degree in 2015, studying under the renowned guitarist Craig Ogden at the prestigious Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. Marcus is currently in the fourth year of his undergraduate degree.

Daphne Duo appears by kind permission of the RNCM.

Free poetry and music event at the Whitworth Art Gallery on 27 April 2019 (2.30-4.00). This is our annual commission event; four poets have been invited to participate in a poetry commission ‘Reimagining the City’:

Mona Arshi

Photo credit: Svetlana Cernenko

Mona Arshi worked as a  Human rights lawyer at Liberty before she started writing poetry. She completed her Masters in poetry in 2011 at the University of East Anglia with a distinction. Her debut collection  ‘Small Hands’ won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2015. She has also been a prizewinner in the Magma, Troubadour and Manchester creative writing competitions. Mona was the 2016-2017 Arvon/Jerwood poetry mentor .She has performed her work at over 40 Festivals both here and abroad. She has read at the Royal Society of Literature, the Poetry School, The Southbank and in  2017 she was one of the judges for the Forward Prize. Mona makes regular appearances on the radio including Front Row and was recently commissioned to write a programme on the Odyssey for ‘Book of the week’ for Radio 4. Her poems and interviews have been published in many magazines including The Times, The Guardian, The Times of India as well as on the London Underground. In 2015 Sathnam Sanghera from the Times  described Mona as ‘nothing less than Britain’s most promising writer.’

Mona’s second collection ‘Dear Big Gods’ is to due to be published in April 2019 by Liverpool University Press.

Will Harris

Will Harris is a London-based poet and critic. He is the author of the chapbook of poems, All this is implied (HappenStance, 2017), and the essay, Mixed-Race Superman (Peninsula Press, 2018). His first full-length poetry book, RENDANG, is forthcoming from Granta in spring 2020.

Maryam Hessavi

Maryam Hessavi a British, Manchester-based poet. An Alumni of The University of Manchester, her poetry has featured in various commissions, Peter Barlow’s Cigarette series, Ledbury Festival 2018 readings, readings with Kevin Bateman Presents, Smoke Magazine, Ambit and The Emma Press. She is a Ledbury Critic, with reviews featured or forthcoming in The Manchester Review, Poetry London, Poetry Wales, The Poetry School, PBS, Magma, Ambit and The Guardian.

Degna Stone

Degna Stone is a co-founder of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, a contributing editor at The Rialto and a pamphlet selector for the Poetry Book Society. She received a Northern Writers Award in 2015 and is a fellow of The Complete Works III. She is an Inscribe supported writer and her latest pamphlet Handling Stolen Goods is published by Peepal Tree Press. Her appearances include: StAnza International Poetry Festival, Leeds Lit Festival and BBC Radio 3s The Verb. (Photo credit: Phil Punton).

Paula Darwish and Serpil Kılıç

Already a singer/songwriter in her own right, Paula Darwish became more well known in the early 2000s for her unique and captivating interpretations of Turkish and Kurdish folk songs. Her growing passion for the the old folk music of the Anatolia region led to the founding of the Country & Eastern band in Manchester (2002-2012). The band combined elements of Turkish and later Kurdish folk with electric instruments and western grooves. Paula now mainly performs acoustically with Serpil, who is originally from Dersim province in Turkey and has been playing bağlama with Paula since 2004. As well as Turkish and Kurdish songs, their repertoire also includes song in Arabic, Armenian and other Middle Eastern languages.

Workshop with John McAuliife on Saturday 27 April 2019, 10.30-12.30 at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. The fee is £20. Participants are invited to bring along a poem to share with John and the group for feedback (please bring 15 copies of the poem). Please email davidborrott@btinternet.com to confirm a place. Once your place has been confirmed payment can be made by cheque or by using the PayPal button below:

Workshop Payment £20 

John McAuliffe

John McAuliffe has worked as a poet and teacher in Manchester since 2004. His fourth book The Way In won the Michael Hartnett Prize in 2016. His versions of Igor Klikovac, Stockholm Syndrome (Smith Doorstop), is the PBS Spring Pamphlet Choice, and a pamphlet of new poems, A Good Connection, is forthcoming with Periplum later this year. He also writes a regular poetry column for The Irish Times.

Free event at the Whitworth Art Gallery. All welcome.

Jacob Polley

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Jacob Polley was born and grew up in Cumbria. He has published four books of poems with Picador, winning the 2016 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry for his fourth, Jackself. He was also awarded the 2013 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, for The Havocs, and the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel, Talk of the Town (2009). Jacob has written and performed drama for the radio, as well as made films and various collaborative public art and performance pieces. Jacob is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and lives with his family on the North East coast.

Jackself was described by the judges of the T.S. Eliot Prize as ‘a firework of a book; inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling.’ A poet of the uncanny and the startlingly lyrical, Jacob Polley’s work explores his rural upbringing, the forces of tradition and history, and the power of speech as it approaches song.

Phoebe Power

Phoebe Power’s debut poetry collection, Shrines of Upper Austria (Carcanet, 2018), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Winner of the 2018 Forward (Felix Dennis) Prize for Best First Collection and shortlisted for the 2018 T.S. Eliot Prize. She has collaborated with other artists on projects including a live performance of her pamphlet Harp Duet (Eyewear, 2016), and Christl, a video installation involving poetry, visual art and sound. Phoebe received a Northern Writers’ Award in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2012.

Amy McCauley

Amy McCauley is a poet, editor, performer and workshop facilitator. She is an Editor at MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture and her dramatic work Oedipa was published by Guillemot Press in 2018.

Rachael Gladwin

Rachael Gladwin is a singer-songwriter and contemporary harpist. Her upbeat folky songs deliver melodic stories about people, places and journeys. Rachael also works in jazz, music for street theatre and indoor theatre, large scale performance projects, creative session playing and performing nationwide with various bands. She has played and recorded with dozens of artists including Guy Garvey, Corinne Bailey Rae, DJ Shadow, Jimmy Osmond and  Susan Boyle. Internationally, Rachael is the harpist for the dazzling French street theatre company La Machine where she performs on a moving cherry picker 40 feet in the air next to giant roaming mechanical animals.

For Poets and Players Rachael will be performing songs from her 2018 album, Somewhere by the Moon.

Workshop with Mark Pajak on Saturday 23 March 2019, 10.30-12.30 at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. The fee is £20. Please email davidborrott@btinternet.com to confirm a place. Once your place has been confirmed payment can be made by cheque or by using the PayPal button below:

Workshop Payment £20

Mark Pajak

Mark Pajak’s work has appeared in The London Review of Books, Poetry London, The North, The Rialto and Magma. He has been commended in the National Poetry Competition, awarded first place in The Bridport Prize and has also received a Northern Writers’ Award, an Eric Gregory Award and an UNESCO international writing residency. His first pamphlet, Spitting Distance, was selected by Carol Ann Duffy as a Laureate’s Choice and is published with smith|doorstop.